Our company ships an MVC based product (targeting v4.5) which has stopped working on a customer site for what appear to be environmental issues - a build which worked with no problems once upon a time now gives a 403.14 - The Web server is configured to not list the contents of this directory.
.
What I think is happening...
The user accesses http://server/AppName
Because it's an MVC app, the default route (Reports/Index) should be used.
Instead IIS is looking for a default document...
... and, not finding one, it assumes the user wants to list the contents of the directory...
...which is not enabled so it throws a 403.14.
.
What I've tried so far...
Accessing the route directly.. results in 404 error. So I'm pretty
sure IIS doesn't realise it should use routing.
Use aspnet_regiis to register ASP.Net with IIS. This was done from the Framework64 folder since...
OS is 64 bit - Windows Server 2008 (Standard without Hyper-V)
IIS is 64 bit - though Enable 32-Bit Applications is true
Checked AppPool is targeting v4 of the framework - it is.
Changed AppPool mode to Classic - was pretty sure it should be integrated but was worth ruling it out. It is now back to Integrated
Confirmed RunAllManagedModulesForAllRequests is set to true in the web.config.
Checked permission conditions defined in <system.webServer> section of web.config are met - they are.
Created the simplest of MVC applications and deployed it - same problem.
Running the command shell as Administrator unregistered ASP.Net using aspnet_regiis -ua and re-registered using aspnet_regiis -enable -i. We hit a couple of permission problems - and the Temporary ASP.NET Files directory was missing but once they were address we were back to the same error.
Added a simple default.htm - when present, this is served in response to the http://server/AppName request.
I'm clean out of ideas and all google hits suggest some combination of the above - or enabling directory browsing (which I think is just a symptom rather than the root cause).
Also, not sure if it's relevant but the amount of configurable elements available for the application in IIS seems a bit below what I would have expected...
Have you Checked the user the application pool process is running under? I think Your site needs to run with permissions to execute the .net libraries and I've seen this just change for seemingly no reason (probably related to an overzealous update to the system).
You can try with the Enabling directory browsing .
assuming you are under Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2012 R2
On the taskbar, click Server Manager.
In Server Manager, click the Manage menu, and then click Add Roles
and Features.
In the Add Roles and Features wizard, click Next. Select the
installation type and click Next. Select the destination server and
click Next.
On the Server Roles page, expand Web Server (IIS), expand Web
Server, expand Common HTTP Features, and then select Directory
Browsing. Click Next.
On the Select features page, click Next. On the Confirm installation
selections page, click Install. On the Results page, click Close.
if you using the Windows PC try this in your command prompt as follows:
go to C:\Program Files\IIS Express
then press Enter:appcmd set config
/section:system.webServer/directoryBrowse /enabled
Maybe this is your case https://forums.iis.net/t/1157304.aspx
SQL Server Reporting Services creates a folder called Reports by
default if you install it on IIS. If you install SQL 2008 then
Reporting Services doesn't need to use IIS and instead will try to
reserve the URL with the HTTP.Sys service.
I believe this is the cause of the conflict you are seeing. What you
could try is changing the URL that Reporting Services uses via the SQL
Server Configuration Wizard.
Also I found that
Report Manager of SQL Server can use reports path http://<server name>/reports
Configure a Native Mode Report Server for Local Administration (SSRS)
I think the problem is IIS features that are not installed yet. I have met this kind of problem frequently in Windows Pro. Make sure to turn on every feature under Internet Information Service -> World Wide Services because by default IIS is configured to use WebForms. So there might be some features that not installed yet to use MVC, especially ISAPI filters. In my case, that was the solution. I hope it helps.
Something similar i encountered using VS 2017 & ASP.NET MVC.
Was working on the project for long with no problems at all but suddenly the routing started misbehaving & stopped working.
So I changed the Port in Project Properties Page & it started working.
I really don't know what is the relation between a port & MVC routing modules. Someone else can enlighten if at all this helps.
I had the same problem and I just created an application pool out of the Default Web Site in IIS and stoped the default web site. With that difference you will not have the application pool's path
I know it's been a long time since this question but i've had the same problema recently. I've tried every single configuration, just like #amcdermott did, but the only action that solve the problem was reinstalling .NET Framework.
My app was built under .NET Framework 4.5.2. The application server had the version 4.6.1 and 4.5.2 installed. So, i uninstalled all framework versions and installed the one that i needed.
Please, make sure that no other applications use superior versions of .NET Framework if you going to try this solution.
Here are some quote I find on Microsoft official site which I think may help:
For site administrators
This problem occurs because the Web site does not have the Directory Browsing feature enabled, and the default document is not configured. To resolve this problem, use one of the following methods:
Method 1: Enable the Directory Browsing feature in IIS (Recommended)
To resolve this problem, follow these steps:
Start IIS Manager. To do this, click Start, click Run, type inetmgr.exe, and then click OK.
In IIS Manager, expand server name, expand Web sites, and then click the website that you want to modify.
In the Features view, double-click Directory Browsing.
In the Actions pane, click Enable.
Method 2: Add a default document
To resolve this problem, follow these steps:
Start IIS Manager. To do this, click Start, click Run, type inetmgr.exe, and then click OK.
In IIS Manager, expand server name, expand Web sites, and then click the website that you want to modify.
In the Features view, double-click Default Document.
In the Actions pane, click Enable.
In the File Name box, type the name of the default document, and then click OK.
Method 3: Enable the Directory Browsing feature in IIS Express
Note This method is for the web developers who experience the issue when they use IIS Express.
To do this, follow these steps:
Open a command prompt, and then go to the IIS Express folder on your computer. For example, go to the following folder in a command prompt:
C:\Program Files\IIS Express
Type the following command, and then press Enter:
appcmd set config /section:directoryBrowse /enabled:true
I'm really new to setting up web servers in general. I've got IIS 8 on Windows 8, and I'm trying to set up a little site locally, while doing some development. In IIS I choose Add Site, give a name, points to a location where I have a index.html file (I've tried different locations, latest in a c:\inetpub\wwwroot\test -folder) and otherwise use all default settings. However, when I try to browse to localhost I get
HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable.
I've verified the pool is started, and I've given IIS_IUSRS Full Control on the target folder
I've search around but not found anything that solved my issue, and there's nothing helpfull in the EventLog or in the C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\HTTPERR folder
Could anyone tell me what's wrong?
It could be that the user identity is outdated, especially if you've tried starting a stopped app pool and the next request again fails.
In IIS, go to the Application Pools under the Server, then find the correct Application Pool for your web site, and click on it. On the Advanced Settings menu to the right, select Identity and change it and enter new user and password. Click on your Application Pool again, and select Recycle to restart it.
You can also try looking at the error message in Event Viewer, under Windows Logs, Application, Details tab.
Other answers are fine. But in my case, I was working on a Windows box that already was running some old IIS, IISExpress or any other web site. What happened is urls ACLs where reserved somehow in the system. So, you might want to check this.
Here is the console command to dump all URL acls:
netsh http show urlacl
Check what's returned here, and if anything matches the url you are testing, here is the command to delete one URL acl (for example):
netsh http delete urlacl url=http://localhost:2018/
(beware to carefully note what you do here in case it was not related to the original problem)
In my case the problem was the DefaultAppPool. I changed the "Load User Profile" to false and now it works. However, I don't know if there are side effects to this.
Further reading on setting the Load User Profile option: What exactly happens when I set LoadUserProfile of IIS pool?
Check your application's respective Application Framework Pool - it could be stopped. If it is, start it and check again.
If you're still experiencing issues you can also check out Event Viewer to find the cause of that error in order to troubleshoot more.
If the app pool is running under some specific user identity, then go to the advanced settings and update the username and password again to ensure they are correct.
If the app pool immediately stops after you start it and your event log shows:
The worker process for application pool 'APP_POOL_NAME' encountered an
error 'Cannot read configuration file ' trying to read configuration
data from file '\?\', line number '0'. The data field contains
the error code.
... you may experiencing a bug that was apparently introduced in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and/or .Net Framework v4.7.1. It can be resolved via the following workaround steps, which are from this answer to the related question Cannot read configuration file ' trying to read configuration data from file '\\?\<EMPTY>', line number '0'.
Go to the drive your IIS is installed on, eg. C:\inetpub\temp\appPools\
Delete the directory (or virtual directory) with the same name as your app pool.
Recycle/Start your app pool again.
I have reported this bug to Microsoft by creating the following issue on the dotnet GitHub repo: After installing 4.7.1, IIS AppPool stops with "Cannot read configuration file".
EDIT
Microsoft responded that this is a known issue with the Windows setup process for the Fall Creators Update and was documented in KB 4050891, Web applications return HTTP Error 503 and WAS event 5189 on Windows 10 Version 1709 (Fall Creators Update). That article provides the following workaround procedure, which is similar to the one above. However, note that it will recycle all app pools regardless of whether they are affected by the issue.
Open a Windows PowerShell window by using the Run as administrator
option.
Run the following commands:
Stop-Service -Force WAS
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force C:\inetpub\temp\appPools\*
Start-Service W3SVC
Or if none of the current solutions work, look in your website's directory for a file called app_offline.htm. That basically tells IIS that your site is unavailable and to show this page instead.
To fix it, either delete it or rename it to app_offline.htm.bak.
In my case, I added it while showing a colleague how to use that to prevent traffic to the site temporarily and then forgot that I did that on my box. Sigh.
Start by looking in Event Viewer, either under the System or the Application log.
In my case the problem was that no worker process could be started for the App Pool because its configuration file couldn't be read - I had included an extra '.' at the end of its name.
I resolved this issue by removing a URL reservation that matched my app directory in IIS. I had a similar (definitely not the same) issue as outlined in this article:
A Not So Common Root Cause for 503 Service Unavailable
It is possible that your domain requires the account used for running the AppPool to have batch logon rights. In which case you will see this same error message. The way you can tell if that is the case, is by looking at the System events in the Event Viewer. There should be an event saying that the account being used with the App Pool has either 'the wrong password or does not have batch logon rights'.
This is why developers quite often use IIS Express on their development machine, since it by passes the batch logon rights issue.
I ran into the same issue, but it was an issue with the actual site settings in IIS.
Select Advanced Settings... for your site/application and then look at the Enabled Protocols value. For whatever reson the value was blank for my site and caused the following error:
HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable.
The fix was to add in http and select OK. The site was then functional again.
For my case, My Default Application Pool was offline.
To troubleshoot the problem, I checked the IIS logs located in C:\Windows\System32\LogFile\HTTPERR. Scroll down to the most recent error logs, this will show you problems with IIS if any.
My Error was "503 1 AppOffline DefaultPool"
Solution
Open IIS Manager
Click on Application Pools, this lists all application pool to your right.
Check if the application pools hosting your api or site has a stop sign on it. If so, right click the application pool and click start.
Try again to access your service from the client
Check Event Viewer - Windows - Application. If there is a red Error line made from IIS-W3SVC-WP and the message is like The Module DLL C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv\rewrite.dll failed to load. The data is the error. then you are missing some Windows Setup features.
In Windows Server 2012 go to Server Manager, Add Roles and Features, Web Server (IIS) and add the matching feature. Usually, most of the Application Development section is installed. Here is a complete list of IIS features and their associated DLL to help in diagnosis.
After going through a few iterations of that I ended on the error message above regarding "rewrite.dll". This led to a direct download and install of Microsoft URL Rewrite tool. Finally all websites came to life.
Our server ran out of disk space on Sunday afternoon which led to an application suddenly failing and returning HTTP error 502. The logs were empty so it had to be something that was occurring before IIS even did anything.
A swift look at the event viewer(WIN+R > eventvwr) exposed the issue.
It's a good idea to filter out the output of the System and Application windows to WAS since it can get pretty verbose in there.
The application depended on another one which was disabled. Therefore keep in mind an application can go down indirectly if one of it's dependent processes has gone down. We simply re-enabled the .NET application pool and our other application started running normally again.
If you have IIS URL Rewriting installed it could be to do with that. I suffered issues after a Windows 10 Update.
This StackOverflow post helped me.
Go to Windows Control Panel > Programs and Features > IIS URL Rewrite Module 2 > Repair.
i see this error after install url rewrite module i try to install previous version of it from:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7435
it fixed my error
In my case, the problem was that another application was using the port that I had bound to my web site.
I found it by running the following command from a command line, which lists all of the listening ports and the executable involved:
netstat -b
If you have McAfee HIPS and if you see the following error in event viewer application log:
The Module DLL C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\HipIISEngineStub.dll failed to load.
The data is the error.
Then this workaround on McAfee.com resolved the issue in my case.
Quote from the page:
Click Start, Run, type explorer and click OK.
Navigate to: %windir%\system32\inetsrv\config
Open the file applicationHost.config as Administrator for editing in Notepad.
Edit the <globalModules> section and remove the following line:
<add name="MfeEngine" image="%windir%\System32\inetsrv\HipIISEngineStub.dll" />
Edit the <modules> section and remove the following line:
<add name="MfeEngine" />
After you have finished editing the applicationHost.config file, save the file, then restart the IIS server using iisreset or by restarting the system.
Actually, in my case https://localhost was working, but http://localhost gave a HTTP 503 Internal server error. Changing the Binding of Default Web Site in IIS to use the hostname localhost instead of a blank host name.
tname for http binding
This could also happen if any recent installs or updates happened with .NET framework and/or ASP.NET. If you are unsure of what happened recently and if all your apps use ASP.NET version 4, you can try reset them by running the following commands in command prompt in administrator mode.
cd C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319
aspnet_regiis -i
This makes sure to install or reinstall ASP.NET 4 and updates existing applications to use ASP.NET 4 version of the app pool. It updates both IIS Classic and Integrated mode handlers and script mappings in the IIS metabase. It also recreates ASP.NET v4.0 and ASP.NET v4.0 Classic app pools, and sets .NET framework 4 to DefaultAppPool and Classic .NET app pools.
I changed the port from 80 to 8080, that's why this error occur. I write localhost/ in search bar then this error occur. My problem is resolved by writing localhost:8080/ in the search then local host open.
This happened to me on a server on our intranet. After browsing through blog posts and Windows logs, it turned out that a few days before Christmas 2015 (related to a Windows Update?) my web site application pool wanted to create a config file in folder c:\inetpub\temp\appPools, but access to this folder was restricted. This caused the application pool to be disabled.
After adding Full control to Everyone on this temp folder, I restarted the Windows Process Activation Service and everything went online again.
If I'd been a little more elegant, it would probably had been enough to grant the AppPool user full control to the folder, but I never seem to remember how the app pool name and app pool user relates to eachother...
Same thing with IIS Express 10.0 after upgrading Windows 7 to Windows 10.
Solution: go to IIS and enable all disabled websites and reinstall ASP.NET Core.
Also check the address bar and make sure the page is in the right location.
This error can be returned instead of the 404 (Page not found). In my case, it was a bad link on the page that didn't have a subfolder included.
I was having this problem when cleaning up my IIS on dev machine, and I had somehow created a virtual folder for a subfolder of my actual development web that I couldn't clear and was creating conflicts.
To clear it I had to use
C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list vdir
and then individually remove the problem virtual directories using
C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe delete app /app.name:"Default Web Site"/{name of virtual directory}
For me the solution is to change Enable 32-bit Applications to False
None of the answers worked for me. So I'd like to share what I found after hours of research..
Keep seeing this message from event logs: The Module DLL C:\Windows\system32\RpcProxy\RpcProxy.dll failed to load. The data is the error. Turns out that dll is 64bit and cannot be loaded into 32bit process.
You can also try the following.
Right-click on the site and 'Basic Settings...'
Click on 'Connect As...'
Click on Specific User and give the new credentials.
Now it should work.
In my case, I had to change my userPass of network because company policies. So, you need to edit your AppPool:
click on Application Pools. Select your pool, 'advanced Settings...' go to 'Process Model' click on 'Identity' and Click on Specific User and give the new credentials.
This might be because of number of connections to the database. I had such a situation and so, wrote a de-constructor and killed db open connection and it resolved.
I had the same problem and found it was caused by permission problems creating the user profile in C:\Users. I gave ApplicationPoolIdentity full permissions to the C:\Users folder, started the site and everything worked, the profile must have been created properly, and my site worked as it should. I then removed access to C:\Users from ApplicationPoolIdentity.
Site wont start on local using ApplicationPoolIdentity, only when using NetworkService: "HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable."
Background: I support a classic ASP environment. I have a development setup locally on my machine as part of that support. I am running IIS7.
To access my environment, I use "http://localhost:99999/" (port # faked for privacy purposes). I have not had a problem with this -- until today.
I built an application that is intended to run in this environment. The app is ASP.NET v.4.0 (for sake of example, I'll say it's called "http://localhost:99999/DotNetApp/"). Of course, in order to run this, I had to set up my environment application pool to support it (which it now does).
Problem: after configuring this, I am now getting:
Server Error in '/' Application.
Access is denied.
Description: An error occurred while accessing the resources required to serve this request. You might not have permission to view the requested resources.
Error message 401.3: You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials you supplied (access denied due to Access Control Lists). Ask the Web server's administrator to give you access to '[filepath]\SourceFiles'.
I did NOT get this before I set my IIS configuration. Why am I getting this now?
Note: this ONLY happens with "http://localhost:99999/"; this does NOT happen if I try "http://localhost:99999/default.asp" (the page comes up with no problem).
Anyone have any insight?
Thanks in advance . . .
Edit: Additional symptoms: I tried playing with the application pool settings. The problem goes away if I change the .NET Framework version to either 2.0.50727 or to "No Managed Code." Changing it to 4.0.31319 breaks it. Of course, if I use any of the other two versions, my ASP.NET app won't run.
Edit #2: This problem occurs on ALL links that go to a folder or directory (e.g. "http://localhost:99999/somefolder/"), not just the web root.
Edit #3: I have a workaround: set "http://localhost:99999/" and "http://localhost:99999/DotNetApp/" in separate application pools. The first runs in .NET 2.0, while the latter runs .NET 4.0. (I'll post this as an answer once my 8 hour limit is up.) Probably not the best answer -- I'd prefer something that isn't as much of a kludge -- but for the time being, it'll get the job done. However, if anyone has a solution that enables me to run everything in the same app pool, by all means, post away!
You probably must specify "default.asp" as allowed in your "Default Document" settings in IIS7
EDIT: Check if ASP has been installed: Control Panel -> Programs and features -> Windows Features -> Internet Information Services -> Www services ->Application Development Features-> ASP
EDIT Final solution: The IUSR account is missing from the folder the website is in.
Set the default page for your site in IIS.
Try to set permission "Everyone" for directory "[filepath]\SourceFiles/" or/and "Allow" for other user names and groups in folder properties.
I'm trying to use NAnt/NAntContrib build script to build a web application on Windows 2008 (IIS 7.0).
In the build file, there is mkiisdir task, which fails with:
[mkiisdir] The webservice at 'localhost' does not exist or is not reachable.
All the documents/posts I found so far (non for w2k8, only Vista) say to install IIS 6 Compatibility services (all of them, including scripting tools, etc.) So I did, but it still throws this error.
Any idea what else need to be changes, so NAnt be able to create/delete virtual directories on IIS 7.0?
EDIT: New data - when I log in as local administrator to this server, the nant task succeeds, but it fails when I log in as a domain admin. I have added the domain admins group in the local Administrators group, but it still fails. Any idea what other permissions I need to check/change in order to make my domain admin user to be able to execute this task? I can create manually virtual folders without any problems.
In order to get iis nantcontrib tasks to work you need to install IIS6 Management Compatibility Tools. Here is the blog describing how to do it in Vista:
http://thoughtworker.in/2008/01/15/nant-the-webservice-at-localhost-does-not-exist-or-is-not-reachable/
Here is a screenshot of how to do it in Windows Server 2008:
alt text http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/699/iis6tools.png
To answer my own question - I have isolated the part of the code in NantContrib which was causing the problem, and made a sample application to test.
I have posted this as a separate question here, and there is the solution as well.
Cheers